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PAINTING MATERIALS

Pens of metal, although they dominate the writing means of modern times, are
by no means modern in origin. Among writing instruments exhibited in the
British Museum is a bronze pen found in the Tiber at Rome, in its shape much
the same as the steel pen of today. Another found at Pompeii is in the Naples
Museum. There seems to have been little use of metal for writing purposes during

FIGURE 19. Diagrams showing the cutting of pens from quill and reed (largely adapted
from Benson and Carey, pp. 42-48). In the tipper row is shown the general sequence of
cutting a quill, including the position of the metal spring for holding ink; in the middle
row, the cutting of a reed, including the angles given to the nib; and at the bottom, a
series of steel pens used for lettering.
the Middle Ages or the Renaissance or in any general sense until the XIX century.
Samuel Harrison in Birmingham, England, made a steel pen in 1780 but such
devices were not on the market until about 1803 when it is known that they were
sold in London. These pens were in a tubular shape, so formed that the edges
made the slit, and the nib was cut and tapered as was that of the quill. Machine-
made pens did not appear until about 1822, and James Parry is said to have been
the first manufacturer of the steel slip pen. When pen making was established as
an industry, the material used was rolled sheets of cast steel made from Swedish
charcoal iron. Suitable strips were cut from the sheets and these were annealed,
pickled, and rolled to a thickness of about 1/160 inch. From the ribbons of thin
steel the pen blanks were punched, annealed again, and were tempered, scoured,